China’s “Ecological Civilization” as Alternative Ethico-Onto-Episteme to Radicalize Global Sustainability Education?: Flashpoints and New Imaginaries

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Transnational Insights on Decolonial Education

Abstract

Global education for sustainable development remains largely imbricated within a capitalism coloniality through fixation with economy and human manipulation of natural resources. To implode this trap calls for alternative ethico-onto-epistemic perspectives to radicalize the prevailing yet impotent capitalism epistemes and pedagogies. China’s high-profile discourse, “Ecological Civilization” (shengtai wenming), claims the potential to challenge and replace global capitalism’s vision of sustainable development (Gare, 2021). Against the UN’s 2030 sustainable development goals, this paper examines the (in)validity of this claim, explicating possible flashpoints and new imaginaries in (re)configuring and enacting China’s ecological civilization discourse as an alternative cultural-epistemic and pedagogical framework for global sustainable development. Zooming in on China, this paper enriches the global scholarship on decolonial and postcolonial studies in education.

Author

• Weili Zhao, Hangzhou Normal University